


Thorn

by anthean



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Sheep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthean/pseuds/anthean
Summary: "Problem?" Will asks."Maybe," Bran says. Will turns from the window, his posture suddenly alert and tense. "There's a shearling ewe missing."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Ashura! Hope this is enough magic, fate, and feeling for you.

Bran pulls the Land Rover to a stop outside Tywyn Station just as the train is drawing away. He jumps out and slams the door, not bothering to lock it—the dogs are in the back and he'll only be a few minutes—and jogs to the platform, which is already nearly empty. There aren't a lot of people bound for Tywyn, especially at half eight on a Tuesday morning. Among the last travelers lingering on the platform he spots a familiar figure: stocky, brown-haired, with a backpack slung across one shoulder and a duffle bag at his feet.  
  
"Will!" Bran calls, and Will Stanton turns and grins.  
  
"Bran Davies, you're late," he says.  
  
Bran fights to keep his face stern. "Late, he tells me, and what has he done today except nap in a nice comfortable train compartment, while I've already put in half a day's work? Stay up half the night delivering lambs and then you can talk to me about _late_."  
  
"Same old chip, I see. Lambing's been over for months," Will says, shaking his head. "Funny you not knowing that." He looks at Bran for a moment, then steps close and hugs him roughly around the shoulders, his backpack slipping down and thumping Bran in the ribs. Bran hugs back one-handed, his other arm stuck between their bodies. "It's good to see you," Will says, squeezing a little tighter before releasing him.  
  
"And you. Nice cardigan," Bran says, stepping around Will and picking up his duffle. He waves off Will's noise of protest and starts back down the platform. "Suits you. Looks like it belongs to an old man."  
  
"Mary made it—my sister," Will says, falling into step beside him. "She's mad about knitting, keeps making us all stuff. I've got more lumpy hats than I can wear, and I get more every birthday and Christmas. Oh, you brought the dogs!" Will speeds up as they leave the station and the Land Rover comes into view, Moss and Fly's faces pressed against the rear windows.  
  
Bran throws Will's duffle into the back, pushing Fly away when she tries to jump out. "Door's unlocked," he calls to Will before opening his own door and sliding behind the wheel. "Just shove the blanket over if you want, Moss likes to ride up front with me so it's covered in hair." Will laughs and pushes the blanket on the seat to the side, settling in as Bran puts the Land Rover in gear and turns onto the high street, headed out of Tywyn and towards the hills.  
  
They talk for a little while, asking after each others families and trading what passes for gossip between people who have almost no friends in common. Will is in his second year of a veterinary degree, and he tells a few stories about uncooperative cats and their even more uncooperative owners, but he's obviously still tired from the train, and after a while he trails off into silence. Bran lets him rest; they'll have plenty of time to catch up later.  
  
"Are you hungry?" Bran asks after around ten minutes of quiet. "Sorry, I should have asked when we were in town and could have picked something up."  
  
"I brought a sandwich for the train, so I'll be all right for a while. And I've got another in my bag somewhere," Will says. He's staring out the window at the hills and hedges like he's looking for something.  
  
"Good, because I have to stop at the sheep pasture before we can go back to the cottage," Bran says, turning onto the gravel road that will take them onto the mountain.  
  
"Problem?" Will asks.  
  
"Maybe," Bran says. Will turns from the window, his posture suddenly alert and tense. "There's a shearling ewe missing. I want to take the dogs out, see if we can find her. She might just be hiding, although that's odd behavior for a sheep. If she's injured or sick I need to get her down to the farm."  
  
"Ah," Will says in that calm, thoughtful, voice that Bran remembers, before falling silent. He stays quiet, arms folded across his chest, for a long time, while Bran pilots the Land Rover farther out into the lands around the valley, the road rising and falling over the gentle hills and the mountains leaning over it all, their sides mottled green and scattered with the shaggy bodies of sheep. The sky has the bright, scrubbed-clean look of the morning after a rainstorm, cloudless but almost white, and the sides of the road are a patchwork of muddy puddles.  
  
Will stirs when Bran pulls the Land Rover to the side of the road, where a wide metal gate in the hedge marks the entrance to the Clwyd Farm sheep pasture. "It might be nothing," Will says to himself.  
  
"That it might," Bran says, putting the Land Rover in park and hopping out. He unlatches the back and lets the dogs out, and they bark happily and leap at his feet, excited at the prospect of a job to do. "But if it's not, I need to know," he says as Will comes around the side.  
  
"What? Oh, of course. Hullo, dogs!" Will says.  
  
"The black-and-white is Moss," Bran says, "and the all-black is Fly. She's Pen's daughter, if you remember him." Fly is a little shyer than Moss, and she hangs back while Moss bounces at Will's feet, begging to have her ears rubbed. Will holds out his hands and coaxes Fly closer, and soon both dogs are pushing at his knees and panting happily. Will kneels, disappearing momentarily behind the ecstatic dogs, and Bran turns to unlock the gate.  
  
"All right, all right," he says, when the gate's open. When he looks back, Will is sitting on the ground, scratching Fly on the chest and shoulders while Moss shoves her nose in his ear. All three grin up at Bran. He looks back at them over the rim of his sunglasses. "Get off the ground, man, and stop coddling my dogs. They're here to work, and you look ridiculous."  
  
Will scrambles to his feet and punches Bran in the shoulder. "Ach, my dignity," he says solemnly. "The sheep will never respect me now."  
  
"Oh, the sheep will respect you," Bran says. "They recognize their own," and as Will squawks in mock outrage and lunges for him he dodges through the gate and onto the hillside, Will and the dogs in cacophonous pursuit.  
  
Bran settles into a good walking pace as Will catches up, enjoying the stretch in his muscles as he strides up the hill, his boots gripping the soft ground and propelling him forward. It isn't a cold day, but his throat burns a little as his body warms with the exercise and his lungs fill with air. Will, walking beside him, draws long slow breaths through his nose and smiles as he exhales, his face turned towards the high hilltops and sky. He looks a little like Moss, who trots at his heel. Fly, as usual, ranges further afield, pacing them about fifty meters away with her ears pricked for Bran's whistle.  
  
"Look familiar?" Bran asks, just to break the silence.  
  
"Yes and no," Will says after a minute. "The hills are the same, and have been the same since long before any human was here to walk them. But the mice and rabbits that burrow into the hills, the bracken and rushes that grow here, and the birds that circle above…the clouds. They have all been formed and destroyed and formed again since I was last here, and long before that." He shoves his hands in his trouser pockets. "It'll all keep changing and staying the same." A strange note enters Will's voice, a thread of loneliness, and Bran's throat tightens a little.  
  
"Mice and clouds," he says, a little harsher than he means to. Will's words don't seem to fit this plain young man in a hand-knit cardigan, this plain morning hiking up the sheep pasture with the dogs; they remind him of something he can't quite remember, something he both longs for and cannot bear. Something that's been dredged up by the reminder of Pen and brought with it the ghost of another absent dog, a string of long-ago betrayals. It unsettles him more than it should. "More of your nonsense."  
  
"All right, yeah, fine," Will says. "I do like that it doesn't seem to change much here. It's nice to be somewhere that feels, well, that feels old. Lived-in."  
  
"You might like it less if you lived here for longer than a holiday," Bran says, because now he's angry for a completely different reason. "Lived-in, sure, because no one can get out, and nothing comes in except the tourists." He breathes out noisily, kicks at a patch of broken ground. A peregrine screeches somewhere overhead, but the sky is empty when he looks, the bird too high to see. He stops walking and takes off his sunglasses, closing his eyes against the sun while he cleans them on the hem of his shirt. Will is his friend, he reminds himself, and puts his glasses back on. For all they've hardly seen each other since they were children, Will is still his friend, and understands him better than maybe anyone alive, and doesn't deserve this.  
  
"Sorry," he says. "Can we talk about this later?"  
  
"Sheep first, talk later. With tea," Will says, nodding. He stoops suddenly and picks up a small rock, then turns and hurls it down the hill as hard as he can. It thuds to the ground and rolls a little before coming to a stop. "There," Will says, brushing the dirt off his hands. "Now everything's different."  
  
Bran looks at him. Will looks back, straight-faced, until Bran has no choice but to smile and shake his head. "Madman," he says, starting back up the hill.  
  
"You caught me," Will says cheerfully. "So, where's this sheep of yours?"  
  
"I don't know, that's why we're looking." The peregrine screams again, and this time Bran spots it, a sliver of black against the blue. "There are more places to hide up here, more cover, and Fly will let us know if she finds anything." They're struggling up a steep ridge now, smooth grass broken by rocky outcroppings, that appears to dip into a small valley before rising again to meet the mountain that overlooks the entire valley. "If I were a sheep, this is where I'd be," he says, and even as he speaks the peregrine dives out of the empty sky wailing its alarm call and disappears behind the spine of the ridge, and Fly begins barking somewhere out of sight.  
  
Bran breaks into a run, Will right beside him.  
  
The sheep lies in a hollow between one ridge and the next, a white smudge against the grass and rock. She's almost invisible beneath the woody tangle of a bramble bush, leaves glossy and dark.  
  
"Fly, Moss, lawr," Bran shouts as he runs down the hill, and the dogs drop into their low sheepdog crouch, eyes fixed on the sheep and ears pricked for new commands. The sheep kicks a little as Bran approaches and he huffs out a relieved breath: still alive, anyway. He sinks to his knees, ignoring the damp ground, and surveys the damage. The sheep is caught in the brambles, her fleece tangled and knotted with the long thorny canes. Her struggling has drawn her almost entirely into the bush, and so many canes have caught in her wool that she's unable to rise.  
  
"What happened?" Will asks, kneeling beside him.  
  
"Pretty much what it looks like," Bran says. "They get caught on the thorns, the shearlings especially, and then get more caught trying to escape. The thorns point inward, so struggling actually draws them further into the bramble. Happens fairly often, although I don't think I've ever seen it this bad. It's odd, though, I don't remember any bushes in this field. We would have dug them out—too dangerous."  
  
"Can you do anything?" Will asks. He rests his hand on the sheep's head and strokes her ear between finger and thumb.  
  
"We'll try," Bran says. The sheep's eyes are open and bright, and he doesn't see any blood. "I don't think she's been here long. She's just got herself well tangled, although the rain last night doesn't help, if she was out in it. She's got a good chance if we can get her cut out and down to the farm." He pulls out his pocketknife and tests the blade with his thumb. "Not the best tool for the situation, but we'll make do. I'll have to cut some of the brambles away first just to get to her." Will nods and moves to give Bran more space.  
  
Bran takes hold of the first bramble cane, sets his knife to it, and cuts through with a jerk that sets the whole bush shuddering and droplets of water raining down. The sheep looks up at him and kicks a bit; Will puts his hands on her head to calm her. Bran keeps cutting.  
  
It takes a long time just to clear himself a space to reach the sheep, and his blade dulls with every cut until he has to saw through the thickest canes. Will tries to help, pulling the canes toward Bran and holding them in place, but the sheep seems to gain energy as Bran cuts away the canes, and keeping her still soon takes all of Will's attention. Soon their hands are red and and bleeding from shallow thorn scratches.  
  
"I think that's as much as we can clear," Bran says finally. The back of his neck prickles with sweat and dirt, and a particularly deep scratch on his wrist stings badly. Will strips off his cardigan and throws it aside, seemingly not caring about the mud. "Can you hold her while I cut?" Bran asks; Will nods and moves into position. Bran selects a cane tangled in the fleece near the sheep's shoulder, grips it with one hand, and brings the knife down.  
  
The cane snaps, one end still buried in the fleece and the other springing back into the bush and nearly smacking Will's check. The sheep jerks in response and Will scrambles to regain his grip. "Keep going," he says, once the sheep is still again, and Bran returns to work.  
  
He hadn't realized how badly the sheep was caught: the canes are sunk deep into her fleece, covered in vicious thorns and twined around each other to hold her down. He digs through the wool to find where the canes are buried, cutting them off as close to the skin as possible and removing clumps of wool in the process. Soon his hands are greasy with lanolin and his legs ache from kneeling over the sheep's body. The thorns scratch his forearms and catch on his clothes and hair, until he feels like he's fighting to free himself as much as the sheep. He opens the mound of his thumb on a thorn near the sheep's head; blood wells and drips down his hand and the hilt of his pocketknife, but he can't stop. He presses hard and cuts the cane away, leaving a smear of blood on the wool.  
  
The sheep's front half is freed now, and Bran moves deeper into the bramble, reaching into the heart of the bush to grasp the canes that twine around her flanks. His knife is nearly dull, struggling to cut even the thinnest canes. Will beside him leans his whole body on the sheep to keep her still, and her muscles quiver where her belly is pressed against Bran's leg. Without looking, he knows that Will's arms are straining and his shoulders are tense, that Will feels the sheep's anxiety running up the corded tendons of his forearms and that sweat is trickling down the small of his back.  
  
He saws through another cane, another. There's something he's forgotten, something about the hills and sky and sheep, something important. Fly and Moss are somewhere behind him, still alert, waiting with true sheepdog poise for a new task, paws pressed into the dirt and ready to spring into a run at his whistle. He can feel their focus between his shoulder blades.  
  
Another cane, thicker this time. He studies his hands as he grasps the cane and begins to cut, sees the scratches and dirt on his fingers and the dull gleam of the knife, the tufts of oily wool torn free and caught in the thorns, the woody, ragged edge where the cane has begun to break under the knife. Somewhere above him clouds drift across the sky, spinning themselves into and out of existence, their shadows gliding over the old, old, hills. The mountains lean over the valley, over everything, and he feels the vault of the sky opening endlessly above him, over him and the sheep and Will. He almost remembers, almost, and nearly cries out at how close the memory is.  
  
"Will," he says, because Will is at the center somehow, always has been. His hands still but don't lose their grip. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Nothing, I'm not doing anything," Will says. His voice sounds very far away. "I don't know what's happening, Bran, but _keep going_."  
  
Bran cuts again, and now the world seems to narrow to his hands, and the knife, and the task to finish. He cuts, and the bramble cane is a red ribbon, tangled and snarled through the bones of a horse. Again, and the cane is the root of a may-tree, and petals white as fleece drift down around his hands. Yet another cane, this one thick enough to need the full force of his arm, and the cane is a stem of mistletoe, tipped with a spray of silvery buds, and the battered pocketknife is a gleaming sword. He bears down, and the cane snaps.  
  
He can see the whole sheep now, her body no longer hidden by the brambles, and the last cane is wrapped tightly around her hind leg, leaving wounds that look bloody and possibly infected. He reaches into the bramble as far as he can, grabs the cane in one hand and draws the knife across it. The angle is so bad and the knife so dull that it barely makes a mark on the wood, and the sheep, realizing that freedom is close, begins to struggle again. Bran tosses the knife aside and reaches in, pulling the long cane loose with his hands. The cane is smeared with sheep's blood and slippery in his grasp, so he grips it tighter, the thorns biting into his battered hands, and lifts it free.  
  
He remembers.  
  
Memories break the surface of his conscious mind, shells and polished stones revealed by a receding tide. Eirias singing like a torch in his hand. Fire on the mountain, and Cafall, _Cafall_. A bearded man, a king, warm and sad at the same time, who had looked at him with love and pride and called him "son". His father.  
  
For a moment, the memories are all he can think about; they shoulder their way to the top of his mind, filling gaps he hadn't realized were there, making sense of a life he hadn't known how to interpret. His head aches, agony that seems formed from every childhood loss felt anew, and he drifts until even the pain ebbs away.  
  
He feels drained, but like what has been left behind is truer than what is now gone.  
  
He's on his hands and knees in the mud, under a bramble bush. The cut ends of the canes pop out greenish-white in the bramble's dark mass. Somehow, the sheep has scrambled out from under him and is now standing a few meters away, her injured hind foot held off the ground and her fleece sadly tattered, but otherwise looking none the worse for her misadventure. The dogs lie on their bellies, a light wind combs the grass and sends clouds scudding across the hilltops, and, on the edge of hearing, a peregrine cries a greeting.  
  
"Bran? Are you all right?"  
  
Will.  
  
Will is sitting a few feet away, legs splayed—probably knocked back by the sheep as she made her getaway—sleeves rolled to the elbows and forearms smudged with dirt, the hair around his face stuck to his forehead with sweat. "Bran?" Will says again, voice thick with hope and face open with longing, and for a moment Bran understands Will better than anything he's ever thought he knew before.  
  
"I remember," Bran says, and grabs Will by the back of the neck and kisses him with every ounce of unlocked feeling he can muster.  
  
Will kisses back immediately and fiercely, which surprises Bran for about half a second until he moves on to more important things, like how warm Will's body is against his and the way Will's hands curve around his waist as he sighs and smiles into Bran's mouth. "I remember," Bran says into the kiss, "Duw, Will, everything they made me forget, I remember."  
  
Will breaks the kiss and buries his head in Bran's shoulder, his hands clenching in Bran's shirt. "I didn't even want to hope," he says, a little muffled. "God, it's just…it's only been me. I've been so lonely, it's awful."  
  
"I know," Bran says, and he does know, he's been horribly, achingly, lonely, living in a world shaped by events he hasn't remembered, growing up able to find no source, no explanation for any of the feelings that burst from his skin and out of his mouth. If this was the Light's idea of a normal life, then abnormal might have been preferable.  
  
"You're the only one who does," Will says, and Bran is abruptly furious on his behalf, furious that Will, who has given everything to the world, should be left to pace out the centuries so utterly alone, with barely a spark of hope for companionship, for connection. He's furious, and then he breathes out and puts it aside. Anger later. For now, he can kiss Will again, can run his fingers up Will's neck into his hair and feel him shiver.  
  
Will laughs when the kiss ends, lips pink and eyes bright. "I have to admit," he says, a little breathless, "this was not how I was expecting this trip to turn out."  
  
"Old One powers getting a little rusty?" Bran asks, standing up and giving Will a hand.  
  
"Ha ha, you wish," Will says amiably, and pulls a few bramble leaves out of Bran's hair. Bran folds up his battered pocketknife and returns it to his pocket. When he looks up, Will is standing a few feet away, head tilted towards the sky and face relaxed and peaceful. Fly has abandoned her crouch and is leaning against Will's knee, having apparently decided that Will is her new favorite, and Bran briefly wonders if he's going to be down a sheepdog when this visit is over. "Hey," Bran says, walking to stand next to Will. "What happened, back there? That wasn't the Dark or the Light. High magic?"  
  
"Maybe. I don't know," Will says, taking Bran's hand. "Really, I don't. It's wonderful, after everything, to not know something."  
  
"Glad to keep you on your toes," Bran says.  
  
"But I think it was you," Will continues as though Bran hadn't spoken. "The powers of the Light are great, but they were never a match for Bran Davies." He squeezes Bran's hand and smiles, and for once there's nothing Bran can say.  
  
"We should get that sheep down to the farm," he finally manages. "No use spending all that time cutting her out if we're just going to let her die of exposure."  
  
"Good plan. I can take a look at her leg later, if you want," Will says, giving Bran a last quick kiss before dropping his hand. "You carry the sheep, I'll keep an eye out for any lurking brambles."  
  
"I ought to make you carry her," Bran says, but he sidles up to the wary sheep and lifts her across his shoulders anyway, careful not to touch the wounds on her leg. "Teach you something about real work."  
  
"Sure, okay," Will says, laughing, and they set off towards the gate together, dogs loping at their heels, down the old, still, mountain and under the wide, wide, sky.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I am super American and have very little experience with either Wales or shepherding. Hopefully that's not too obvious, although please let me know if I can fix something.
> 
> Second, apparently the bramble thing actually happens! I got the idea from [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuzLXxbGc4c), although the instance in the fic is much more severe.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
